0447 | A Tale of a Tub | Jonathan Swift

byJohnonMarch 25, 2014

Context: listened to this off Librivox while shelling a couple of kilos of prawns. Yum.

Swift is better known for his later works (Gulliver’s Travels and A Modest Proposalin particular) and having read those before turning to this, it’s easy to see why. In fact, I’m very glad I did it that way round or I might have never had the courage to face the others. A Tale of a Tub is not an easy read. For a start, it lacks a cohesive structure, but as with all dated satire, references can be very hard to pinpoint.

Thankfully, it starts out pretty simply. Three brothers are left coats in their father’s will which instructs them not to make any alterations to them at all. Of course, as fashions change, they make every effort they can to read the will to see what’s allowed and what isn’t. And where their wishes are not granted, they find a loophole to enable them to gratify themselves.

The three brothers are fairly obviously the Roman Catholic, Lutheran and Calvinist branches of the church and they come in for somestinging satire being the main targets throughout the book. In this writing, you can easily see the genius that was to set Swift apart from his generation. In fact, it’s a measure of his genius that his satire is very, very much relevant today; I finished the book while gay marriage became legal in the UK and heard members of the Church of England speaking out in support of it.

But what makes this book a tad difficult is that Swift has not knocked his work into something of a comprehensive whole. There are digressions all over the place. In fact, there are digressions explicitly about digressions! Sure, there is a lot of license when writing satire but this didn’t work for me. I was grateful that this was a pretty short one.

So, an important book because it shows the Swift that was to come. But not one I’ll be rereading before I die.

OPENING LINE

The wits of the present age being so very numerous and penetrating, it seems the grandees of Church and State begin to fall under horrible apprehensions lest these gentlemen, during the intervals of a long peace, should find leisure to pick holes in the weak sides of religion and government.

99TH PAGE QUOTE

This far into the book, some of the plot might be revealed. If you want to see the quote, click show

For, first of all, as eminent a cabalist as his disciples would represent him, his account of the opus magnum is extremely poor and deficient; he seems to have read but very superficially either Sendivogus, Behmen, or Anthroposophia Theomagica. He is also quite mistaken about the sphaera pyroplastica, a neglect not to be atoned for, and (if the reader will admit so severe a censure) vix crederem autorem hunc unquam audivisse ignis vocem. His failings are not less prominent in several parts of the mechanics. For having read his writings with the utmost application usual among modern wits, I could never yet discover the least direction about the structure of that useful instrument a save-all; for want of which, if the moderns had not lent their assistance, we might yet have wandered in the dark. But I have still behind a fault far more notorious to tax this author with; I mean his gross ignorance in the common laws of this realm, and in the doctrine as well as discipline of the Church of England.

CLOSING LINE

This might reveal the ending. If you want to see the quote, click show

Of these he knows a great number ready instructed in most countries; but the whole scheme of this matter he is to draw up at large and communicate to his friend.